The Best Out of the Box Gift Idea for Anyone in Your Life? A Custom Portrait! ~

A Custom Painting is a Fantastic Unique Gift Idea

Some people are just hard to buy for. It can be difficult to think of a meaningful gift idea when someone has pretty much everything they could ever need, they have unique tastes, or they just don’t like a lot of stuff around the house.

A custom painting might be the perfect answer to the doubt so many people experience when trying to buy a gift for one of these notoriously difficult to buy for people.

“A custom painting?” you might be asking. “Isn’t that a little extra and difficult to pull off?” No way! It’s actually so easy. At Paint Your Life, you can order a custom portrait that’s drawn from a photo or photos that you already have.

Why is a Portrait a Great, Irreplaceable Gift?

Before camera were widespread, many people would never have a picture of their loved ones that was portable. They only carried their impressions in their hearts and in their heads. Portraiture was popular because it immortalized people, made sure their memory lived on. However, it was very expensive. Many people would never be able to afford to have a portrait painted.

Portraits took a long time and required a lot of often tricky to find materials. They were rare and generous gifts because of this.

When photography was invented, it rapidly overtook hand-painted art as the ideal means to preserve memories of people, pets, and places. It was faster, cheaper, and more accessible.

In today’s day and age, photography is still the more popular form of saving pictures for many of the same reasons. Because of this popularity, photos can seem a bit boring, especially if you plan to give it as a momentous, exciting gift. A professional painting is unique; it’s something many people will never receive in their entire life.

Who Would Love to Receive a Painting?

Custom portraiture makes an incredible gift for, no kidding, just about anyone you could think of.

Here are some examples of people who would love custom portrait:

*Parents

*Grandparents

*Spouses

*Aunts or Uncles

*Bosses

*Those whose services you’ve utilized (realtor, attorney, architect, etc.)

*Friends

*Significant others

*Children

A custom painting makes a perfect gift for a wedding, bridal shower, baby shower, birthday, graduation, or any holiday.

Still not sure if this is the right unique gift for your difficult-to-buy-for friend or family member? Go check out some of the galleries of portraits created from paintings at PYL. You can quickly ascertain that there is a style out there for absolutely everyone, every home, every age. The possibilities to customize this unique art are endless!

Customizing Your Portrait

When you’re planning to order a hand-painted portrait, there are a lot of questions you’ll want to think about before you get started.

First, you’ll want to decide what the subject of the picture should be. You’ll need to make sure you can get your hand on a photo or several photos of the subject. Common subjects are children, pets, weddings, families, or homes.

Next, you’ll want to pick a medium. If you’re not much of an art person, this might seem complicated, but you’re really just looking for a medium that appeals to you and that will compliment your chosen subject. You can choose oil, charcoal, watercolor, pencil, and acrylic. Ideally, you’ll pick a medium that will fit into the recipient’s home décor, maybe even choosing based on the specific room you expect the recipient to hang the portrait.

If you have a vague idea of how the various offered mediums look, you might want to go ahead and check out the galleries. You might think that oil or acrylic paints or pastels are the only way you can get a photo-realistic portrait, but you’d be shocked to find that hand drawn pencil portraits can look just like the photo, too.

The next step is to choose an artist. This is one of the coolest parts about having your photo turned into a painting online. You can check out work from several artists at once, choosing one with a unique style that fits your needs.

When you’ve chosen an artist, you’ll work with them to compose the painting that you’ve got in your head. You can add items, change backgrounds, combine photos so that people who have never had the opportunity to stand in the same room are standing side by side, and essentially change anything you could think of. The beauty of handmade paintings is that you can create exactly the picture in your head, even if you can’t actually paint yourself.